


Escape

by disillusionist9



Series: Choose Dare [45]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Horcruxes, Implied Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 10:42:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7931584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disillusionist9/pseuds/disillusionist9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble #46 of 100 | Pansy and Ginny both encountered Dark magic at a young age that plauges them to this day, though the living body of Voldemort is long gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape

Snakeskin against human skin, for some, is a luxurious or pleasurable experience; a continuous link of dry scales running a smooth course over exposed and sensitive flesh.

Pansy recoiled from the feeling, the feeling she woke up to in the middle of each night for months, and wished she could burn the feeling away. Cut it away. Drink it away. Dark purple rings replaced blue smudges as the weeks wore on. She barely had enough energy to conceal them with charms and make up every day.

Years passed, and thousands of stairs marked the soles of her feet, each one closer to the Gryffindor Tower than anyone would imagine. When the papers reported it, it was a scandal. Slytherin bitch and Gryffindor lioness. They didn't know how they held each other at night, grasping each other's skin to forget the crawl of snakeskin.

Harry dismissed Ginny's possession, but Pansy embraced it, pursued it, raked it out of her with nails like claws.

Daphne looked at Pansy with pity and she couldn't stand it; Ginny chased the demons away with her words, her mouth, her fingers, her hips.

Ginny was haunted by a beautiful boy of sixteen in her dreams, a shadow not quite dismissed after the destruction of the diary. Pansy did not know the identity of her tormentor, but Ginny was the only one with the power to chase him back.

"Do you remember when they started?"

Ginny traced runes of love and protection around her bellybutton. They were both too warm to embrace yet, nerve endings like fireworks beneath their skin as they came down from their shared high. Pansy turned to look at her lover and brushed Ginny's auburn hair, tickling her shoulder blade, behind an ear.

"I was eight," she replied, voice breathy from exertion. "After my official presentation to Draco's parents."

Ginny pulled a face, her nose scrunching up in distaste. The break in tension, both post-coital and emotional, was so sudden, Pansy burst with a bright laugh. "Draco looked at me like it was a life sentence in Azkaban. We loved each other as children do, but the idea of marriage...abhorrent!"

Comparing the olive tone of her pale knuckles to the freckled flush of Ginny's thigh, Pansy fell silent. The sex was amazing...bone-meltingly, speechlessly, blindingly wonderful. But it was an escape and they both recognized it for what it was.

Ginny was willing to drag the pain to the surface where Pansy would leave it beneath the murky algae-covered lake bottom where it belonged. Breathing in the scent of sweat and sex in the air to ground her before she fell over the cliff, Pansy continued speaking, thankful for Ginny's patience.

"That diary, the one you told me about? It was in the room I hid in for a few hours after that presentation, out on the table near some other objects I knew I wasn't supposed to touch. I left that alone but the chair I sat in...the one I fell asleep in? Lucius Malfoy nearly had a heart attack when they found me napping in it, Floo called their personal Healer straight away."

Ginny ran her fingers through Pansy's short blonde bob, smoothing the fringe back as she listened.

"I can't even remember how many spells they cast on me, but they couldn't find a thing. That chair put me to sleep as soon as I'd sat down...I think they had the elves burn it that night, and the wood _screamed_. In _Parseltongue_...all I remember is the leather had the Gaunt emblem carved into it, because mother was drilling the Sacred Twenty-Eight into my head that month."

The hand through Pany's hair slowed but didn't stop. "The Gaunts? Wasn't the last one in Azkaban?"

"Morfin, yeah."

"Harry talked about them," Ginny said, telling Pansy everything she could remember about the ill-fated family, including their relation to the very much deceased Dark Lord.

A frown turned down the corners of her cupid's bow lips as Pansy chewed on her next revelation, something she'd never shared with anyone else. "I...I think the Gaunts trapped someone in that chair."

Pulling the blonde closer to her chest, cradling her like a child in their shared bed, Ginny pressed her lips against Pansy's hair. "If you _think_ they did, then I know they did."

Two beats passed, then, "Who do you think it was?"

Shaking her head, Pansy muttered against the crook of the redhead's neck, "This man, he asks me to release him, to let him pass on, but I don't know how! I think he was trapped in that chair the same way that You-Know-Who made those Horcuxes. Had to have been a Muggle for how he talks...and he feels like how you describe Tom. He _looks_ like how you describe Tom. "

To her credit, Ginny held onto Pansy and stroked her hair without missing a beat. What Pansy couldn't see was the set of Ginny's jaw, trying not to grind her teeth. "If you think, because I was exposed to that monster, being around me has made it worse-"

"No!" Pansy shot up, and narrowly missed slamming her forehead against her partner's jaw in her haste. "No, it's not you that's bringing him up, and it's not your Tom, I _know_ it. Please don't think that."

Chaste kisses shared in the afternoon sun soothed away the shaking tension in their shoulders, and holding each other flesh to flesh fought the whisper of snakeskin against them in the night. The ghastly memories of two family lines, destroyed by greed and misery, haunted the two pure-blooded witches. Only through each other did they find peace.


End file.
